Page 214 of Disarm
He chews on his bottom lip. “I… don’t know,” he says honestly. “Not this weekend. Not while my brain’s still doing the ‘what if I fail at the NBA and life’ tango. Maybe… coffee or something. Somewhere low-stakes with exits.”
“That’s fair,” I say. “You can tell him that. Or I can. Or we can not tell him anything for a few days and let your nervous system catch up.”
He hums, thinking. “I’ll… sit with it,” he says. “Right now, I’m just… relieved it wasn’t a blowup. And tired. So tired.”
“Then that’s the only thing you have to feel right now,” I say. “The rest can wait.”
His hand finds my thigh and rests there, fingers curling in the denim. “I hate that I can’t just be like, ‘yay, progress,’” he admits. “I hate that there’s always this… second voice going, ‘don’t trust it, it won’t last, don’t you dare relax.’”
“That’s not your fault,” I say. “That voice kept you safe for a long time. It’s going to take a while to convince it it can take weekends off.”
He snorts. “You and Dr. K really are in a group chat, huh?”
“We’re planning your liberation arc,” I say, straight-faced.
He laughs for real this time, some of the heaviness cracking. “God, I love you,” he says.
I kiss his hair. “I love you more,” I say. “Even when your dad is being a dumbass in progress.”
Caleb sighs and tilts his face up for a kiss. It’s soft, slow, and not about distraction this time. Just contact.
A slow reminder we’re here.
Later, when he goes back to his laptop and I pretend to watch the game, I catch myself thinking about Dad again. The way his hand trembled on his coffee cup. The way his voice caught when he said, “holding a lot for a long time.”
He’s trying.
He’s also… human. Flawed.Late as fuck to the party.But still capable of hurting us if we don’t keep our eyes open.
Useful information. Not a death sentence.
THIRTY-NINE
CALEB
Exam week has a very specific taste associated with it for me. Burnt coffee, stale vending machine chips, and that weird metallic tang in the back of your throat when your body’s convinced something bad is coming, even if the worst thing on the calendar is a blue book and a Scantron.
Campus looks like something straight out of a zombie movie. People shuffling around in sweatpants, clutching iced coffee like IV bags. The library is a war zone of highlighters, cracked spines, and broken spirits. Somebody in the corner’s been crying over organic chem for, like, an hour.
I’m… fine.
Fine-adjacent.
Running on caffeine, adrenaline, and vibes.
The safety plan in my notebook says, “Exams are stressful. Don’t over-pathologize normal stress.” Dr. K’s words, not mine.
So in other words, I’m tired, wired, behind on sleep, and the noise in my brain is humming at about a five. Maybe six on a bad hour. That’s… manageable.
If I keep moving.
If I don’t let my thoughts get too loud.
Psychopathology isthe worst possible class to walk into during exam week. The lecture hall is overheated, everyone smells like stress and deodorant trying its best, and the PowerPoint title on the screen reads:
Childhood Maltreatment and Long-Term Outcomes.
Cool.
